Many Common Ideas

TTCD, "Makan’s “Iqbal and Ten Other Luminaries” translated into German" - Tehran Times - Tehran, Iran
Sunday, April 27, 2008

The book “Iqbal and Ten Other Luminaries” by Iranian scholar Mohammad Baqaii Makan has recently been translated to German

“Iqbal and Ten Other Luminaries” is a comparative study of the thoughts and ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal and those of ten other luminaries including Molana Rumi, Homer, Hermann Hesse, Suhrawardi, Sanaii, and Nietzsche.

The book is translated into German by Ali Rahbar, the head of the Iranology Center in Köln, Germany. The German translation is now ready for publication.

“Iqbal and Ten Other Luminaries” was first published in Persian by the Iqbal Academy in Pakistan. The academy has also undertaken the translation of the book to English and Urdu.

However, it was only last year that the book became available to Iranian readers by the Hekayati Digar Publication.

“After all these years of study and research on the works of Iqbal and many other intellectual figures like Homer and Hesse, and emending the manuscripts of the works of Rumi, Shabestari and Sanaii, I have come to the realization that these figures share many common ideas,” Makan said about his book.

“Iqbal was a scholar who carried out extensive studies on Western culture and literature and has been inspired by the Western works of literature,” he adds.

Makan received the Pakistan’s National Medal of Distinction, the Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, from the Pakistani ambassador in Tehran in 2006. The 24-volume book “The Retrospective of the Thoughts and Works of Iqbal” is among Makan’s credits.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal (November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938) was a Muslim poet, philosopher and politician born in Sialkot, British India (now in Pakistan), whose poetry in Urdu and Persian is considered to be amongst the greatest of the modern era, and whose vision of an independent state for the Muslims of British India was to inspire the creation of Pakistan.

[Picture: Sir Muhammad Iqbal. Photo from TTCD/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Iqbal].